The Cinema Studies Institute presents a special seminar with Murray Smith, director of the University of Kent’s Aesthetics Research Centre. Professor Smith will discuss his chapter, “The Reality of (Screen) Characters,” published in The Palgrave Handbook of Screenwriting Studies (2023).
Tuesday, June 10, 2025
Room 223E, Innis College, 2 Sussex Ave
Room 223E, Innis College, 2 Sussex Ave
Abstract
Characters are central to our engagement with narratives. In the context of film and television, character creation almost always begins with the screenplay: filmic characters are conceived in screenplays before they are incarnated by performers and born audiovisually in films. What kind of ontological status do these fictional creatures possess?